There are many credit monitoring services to choose from, and oftentimes your bank or credit card company will refer you to a particular one that they are affiliated with. Most will allow you to use the service for the first 30 days for free, or the first two months for $1, then pay $9.99 - $12.99 a month. For your convenience, you're given the option to have the fee automatically charged to their credit card or checking account, enabling most people to barely miss the small fee, if at all. The monthly fee allows you full daily or monthly access to all three of your credit reports, as well as your credit score, which is important as well. These services are quite thorough, and will send you immediate alerts to inform you if there has been even the slightest change in your credit report. If someone makes an inquiry, updates information about any open account (or a closed one), you will be contacted right away. You will even be contacted if your credit scores change by even one point, which is quite useful, especially if you're trying to maintain or improve your credit.

It's not unheard of for your credit report to contain errors, and is actually more common than consumers realize. According to a study performed in California, 71% of credit reports contain errors, and 25 % of those errors were serious enough to cause credit denials. For most people this is upsetting and unacceptable. A credit monitoring service can prevent you from being denied credit--or even a job--because of inaccurate information that could be unknowingly lowering your credit score. By being a member of a credit monitoring service you can catch these errors as they occur, allowing you to correct them immediately, before they can negatively impact your life.

Obviously, due to all the advantages of using a credit monitoring service it would probably be a terrific idea to subscribe, and if you're planning on applying for a mortgage or purchasing a car within the next few months, you'll definitely want to take advantage of what these services have to offer. Before applying for the loan in order to finance your house or car, you'll be able to easily scrutinize your credit report and locate and resolve any issues before even applying for the loan. Just one late payment or unpaid creditor can drastically reduce your credit score, and if you're able to catch this right away, you can easily pay off the item, and if the information is inaccurate, correct the problem. So, if having good credit is important to you and you want to take charge of your credit reports, subscribing to a credit monitoring service may be one of the best investments you'll ever make.